Pres. Santos’s May 29th land redistribution decree is “right out of Cuba’s totalitarian playbook,” writes Mary O’Grady:
Colombia’s Chávez-Style Land Reform. Ranches can be taken if they are not in the social and ecological interest. (emphasis added)
To implement it, the Santos-controlled Congress granted him rule-by-decree powers much like what Chávez got from his National Assembly.
The land reform is the product of those powers and will advance the full FARC takeover of the country’s institutions. As FARC leader Iván Márquez asserted in an October 2012 speech in Oslo, “The concept of land is inextricably linked to territory.” They “are an indivisible whole that go beyond the mere agrarian aspect and touch vital strategic interests.”
Those interests are eventual iron-fisted control of the country. It is why the FARC demanded, in Havana, that the government claim arbitrary powers to expropriate land and redistribute it. Under Mr. Santos’s decree the state will rule on whether there is an illegal concentration of land and local committees will decide when the use of private property is not meeting social or ecological interests. Courts are sidelined; property is taken administratively.
And how does that advance “the full FARC takeover of the country’s institutions”?
The rural areas where FARC has concentrated for transition to civilian life are also areas where there will be new property titling. Those same zones are slated to become congressional districts, where newly-minted FARC politicians, flush with weapons and cash, probably will be the only ones on the ballot.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE
Here’s Santos yukking it up with his FARC buddies,
“How shameful!
“So much laughter with and homage of terrorists from @JuanManSantos and his administration, while Colombians ask to be heard.”
¡Qué vergüenza!
Cuanta risa y pleitesía de @JuanManSantos y su Gobierno con el terrorismo, mientras los colombianos piden ser escuchados. pic.twitter.com/OCC3qmG9KL— Óscar Iván Zuluaga (@OIZuluaga) June 14, 2017
